On a down day, I think my whole life has been one long battle against fear.

There are so many things to be afraid of. My grandson is apprehensive of spiders. At least one of my daughters has inherited my fear of heights. The funny thing is how each of us is terrified of different things. The first time I entered a public speaking contest, my twelve-year old knees were shaking. I won the contest in spite of it, and now it doesn’t bother me at all to stand up in front of a crowd of people. While I’m fine about public speaking, when it came to swimming, I was scared stiff. It took me months of lessons to make it into the deep end of the pool without panic setting in. A friend said to me, “What are you afraid of? It’s only a swimming pool.” Yeah, that’s the problem!

I had an amazing experience the other day. If a miracle is a direct intervention of God in the ordinary course of events, that’s just what it was. Maybe not the biggest miracle you could think of, but still a miracle.

I was praying and fasting. In mid-afternoon, I was sitting in the car by the bay asking God to resolve a specific situation. In mid-prayer, my phone buzzed. When I saw who it was from, I checked it only to discover the message was that my prayer had been answered.

Yesterday I turned 65. I don’t believe I’m that old, but neither the calendar nor my 97 year old mother lie. Here’s another statistic. I have been in Christian leadership now for 44 of those years. I started leading a student group at the University of Toronto at the age of 21, and never managed to escape leadership in one form or another. I have at long last laid down local church leadership, but have exchanged it for something that in the end will probably prove more demanding yet.